


Lost Children

by Starofwinter



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Child Soldiers, Gen, What-If, this is a callout for the entire galactic senate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15336162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starofwinter/pseuds/Starofwinter
Summary: Rán has a request for the Senate.





	Lost Children

The girl steps up to the podium in the empty pod, her blue eyes wide as she looks up at the assembly.  The holocam droid hovers in front of her, and it shows her features in stark relief - cheekbones sharper than any child’s should be, dark circles under hollow eyes, lips thin as she presses them together.  She swallows hard and takes a breath before she starts to speak. Her voice is serene and quiet, even as it’s broadcast and translated. “I was introduced as Jedi Padawan Rán Seren, but I stand before you today, not as a Jedi, but as a soldier.  I have been fighting a war for two years now, and I have earned my rank as a Commander in the Grand Army of the Republic. I command Storm Battalion, made up of over two thousand men. I have led them for the last year and a half, since I was thirteen.”

She looks around at the murmurs, but continues, her voice unchanging.  “In that time, I have lost countless friends. I have a list, and I ask your patience as I tell you the names of the friends I’ve lost.  Some of them are Padawans - my age, and younger, but hardly any of them were much older. They were children, the same as I was. Some of them are civilians.  Most of them are men I’ve served with. Men I fought alongside. Men whose hands I held as they died. Men who gave their lives for a Republic that never allowed them to choose whether they would fight.  You see them as numbers, but I knew them as friends.”

The outbursts and demands for explanations start, but she ignores all of them, calmly reciting names and ages, images appearing on the screens beside her.  Dates of birth - or in the cases of the clones, their decanting - and deaths, with their names and holos. Her voice falters with grief on occasion, but it never gives out, and she holds the gazes of everyone as she recites her list.  It goes for hours, interspersed with little reminisces on occasion, as she enforces the understanding that these were  _ real beings _ , not just names or numbers or myths.  

She finishes and goes quiet for a moment; when she speaks again, into what has turned into ringing silence, her voice is still soft and without a hint of the accusation her words could hold.  “I come before you now to ask you to stop this butchery.  There are ways to end this war that don’t involve the senseless deaths of thousands. I understand that it’s easy to lose sight of that sometimes, when the war seems far away, fought by beings without names or faces, but this is who is dying for you, out there on those battlefields.  Beings just like you. Just like me. I know my voice is just one, but I ask that you  _ listen _ .  Before more children die for you.”  She bows, then slips away as the pod docks again, walking with the calm air of a Jedi Master through the open doors as the Senate erupts into chaos behind her.  

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this plotbunny for two years, and I think I've finally gotten it out.


End file.
